Noctua is one of the last bastions of high-performance top-flow design CPU coolers, but that doesn't come in the way of Noctua keeping top-flow alive, in fact the company is coming up with more ways to push the performance barrier, and compete with side-flow and closed-loop water cooling kits. Seen here is a new "downdraft" type CPU cooler prototype. The design involves large aluminum fin stacks that propagate along the plane of the motherboard, over the CPU socket and memory slot area. Don't worry, there's 70 mm of clearance with everything below, letting you install certain kinds of tall memory modules.

The heatsink, with its 25 mm thick fans installed isn't much higher than most high-end side-flow tower type heatsinks. The design involves a CPU base from which 7 nickel-plated copper heat pipes shoot up a height of 70 mm, before passing through the two fin stacks. The surface area of this heatsink is said to be 20% higher than that of the NH-D14. The heatsink is ventilated by two 120 mm Focused Flow fans, blowing air downwards. Everything else on the upper-half of the motherboard (such as VRM), gets cooled under the air-flow.

Looks nice and all but I would be terrified about the weight on the socket and the mobo, even when sitting horizontally I would be concerned about it bowing the board to the mobo tray and perhaps causing shorts.

It seems to me air coolers are getting to the point where all in one WC units are the way to go, or perhaps having mobo makers add thin layers of a conductive material like say aluminum around the socket area, to make mobo's more rigid to be able to tollerate 2-4+ pounds of copper and aluminum and nickle trying to tare the socket out of the mobo.

I think this is a hand build example, heatpipes are not even making full contact.

If this is a good performer and gets released I want one, just because it's huge.

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I don't know much on this and it's been a few beers, but i would always roll a dice on a top-down cooler. I had a few, and my mobo was always happy. Tower coolers lack the ability to cool the surroundings, although I know, it's not what they are aimed at. But i would expect from this kind of monstrosity to have a kind of hinges that would make it hang from the top of your case and thus stabilize it a bit. Hope they knows what they does. Because I sure like the idea of cooling my CPU, PWM and RAM at the same time.

I don't know much on this and it's been a few beers, but i would always roll a dice on a top-down cooler. I had a few, and my mobo was always happy. Tower coolers lack the ability to cool the surroundings, although I know, it's not what they are aimed at. But i would expect from this kind of monstrosity to have a kind of hinges that would make it hang from the top of your case and thus stabilize it a bit. Hope they knows what they does. Because I sure like the idea of cooling my CPU, PWM and RAM at the same time.

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I was always confused about "cooling" the surroundings when CPU cooler is pumping through 150W of heat... I have a down draft Thermalright AXP-140 cooler but i have a fan in pull position so it's sucking the air from the fins and handing it over to exhaust fan which is located next to CPU cooler fan under 90° angle (both fans are placed in "L" formation).

it just the weight, you need to calculate the vibration too
personally i wont risking my board going bend of it, thats kinda risky when you hanging it, let say 2 years before you upgrade it
i better consider water cooling maybe or other air based cooling that simple and light weight